Microsoft Teams, Outlook resume services after hours-long outage
What's the story
Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft 365 services have resumed operations after an eight-hour-long outage today. The disruption left thousands of users unable to access their emails, files, and collaboration tools. The issue began around 11:40am PT (1:10am IST, next day) with Outlook being the hardest hit service. At its peak, nearly 15,000 users reported problems on Down Detector.
Service disruption
Problem stemmed from North American infrastructure
Along with Outlook, other services like Microsoft 365 and Teams were also affected by the outage. The problem stemmed from Microsoft's North American infrastructure being overwhelmed by traffic it couldn't handle. In a bid to fix the issue, Microsoft made a load balancing adjustment that inadvertently created more traffic imbalances, according to its own status page.
Ongoing problems
Users still facing issues despite Microsoft's claims
By evening, Microsoft announced that its infrastructure was back to a "healthy state" and improvements were being seen. However, many users continued to report issues on social media, saying they still couldn't send emails or access admin portals hours later. One X user summed it up: "We are still 100% down." This is Microsoft's second multi-hour outage this week after Tuesday's disruption.
Second disruption
Microsoft 365 faces another outage on January 21
On January 21, Microsoft 365 suffered another major outage affecting thousands of users in cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Downdetector.com reported over 4,000 disruptions with Teams and Outlook also facing issues. In response to the incident, Microsoft said their investigation points to a possible third-party networking issue impacting access to some Microsoft 365 services for certain users.
Twitter Post
Microsoft reports continued improvements in service availability and functionality
We’re seeing continued improvements in service availability and functionality as a result of our load-balancing efforts. We’re actively monitoring performance and making targeted adjustments to further improve stability and availability, while continuing recovery actions to…
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) January 23, 2026